rriage, with a second behind it, left the inn
door. He rubbed a hand on his unshaven chin, tried a glance at his
shirt-front, and remarking: 'It won't be any one who knows me,' stood to
let the carriages pass. In the first were a young lady and a gentleman:
the lady brilliantly fair, an effect of auburn hair and complexion,
despite the signs of a storm that had swept them and had not cleared
from her eyelids. Apparently her maid, a damsel sitting straight up,
occupied the carriage following; and this fresh-faced young person
twice quickly and bluntly bent her head as she was driven by. Potts was
unacquainted with the maid. But he knew the lady well, or well enough
for her inattention to be the bigger puzzle. She gazed at the Black
Forest hills in the steadiest manner, with eyes betraying more than
they saw; which solved part of the puzzle, of course. Her reasons for
declining to see him were exposed by the presence of the gentleman
beside her. At the same time, in so highly bred a girl, a defenceless
exposure was unaccountable. Half a nod and the shade of a smile would
have been the proper course; and her going along on the road to the
valley seemed to say it might easily have been taken; except that there
had evidently been a bit of a scene.

Potts ranked Henrietta's beauty far above her cousin Livia's. He was
therefore personally offended by her disregard of him, and her bit of a
scene with the fellow carrying her off did him injury on behalf of his
friend Fleetwood. He dismissed Woodseer curtly. Thirsting more to gossip
than to drink, he took a moody draught of beer at the inn, and by the
aid of a conveyance, hastily built of rotten planks to serve his needs,
and drawn by a horse of the old wars,' as he reported on his arrival
at Baden,--reached that home of the maltreated innocents twenty minutes
before the countess and her party were to start for lunch up the
Lichtenthal. Naturally, he was abused for letting his bird fly: but
as he was shaven, refreshed, and in clean linen, he could pull his
shirt-cuffs and take seat at his breakfast-table with equanimity while
Abrane denounced him.

'I'll bet you the fellow's luck has gone,' said Potts. 'He 's no new
hand and you don't think him so either, Fleet. I've looked into the
fellow's eye and seen a leery old badger at the bottom of it. Talks vile
stuff. However, 'perhaps I didn't drive out on that sweltering Carlsruhe
road for nothing.'

He screwed a look at the earl,